If you are struggling, I want to remind you that some days will be harder than others, but it is worth it. Even in this fucked up world, it is worth it to feel and have your eyes fully open. Not a day goes by that I do not think about it in some form or another. And while I think we can and will recover, I don’t think we do it on an island of will or simply by surrounding ourselves with others in the same boat. It takes work, it takes courage, and a bit of hope to see that it can be different. Some days I wake up, and I’m screaming underwater in my brain, and I want to run from everything and everyone. The lights flicker, and I feel everything, and the crushing weight of this world is too much. But I know it’s not something I can control or manage the same way I cannot be the conductor of my addiction orchestra. I look forward to the day when it doesn’t hurt to exist, but that’s part of the ride. To feel deeply and feel the good, you have to have felt the sad and the pain deeply too, to understand and be grateful for the euphoria that arrives when you’re fully present in this life.

Today I feel like I'm at a crossroad again. The wind is stirring and the owls are outside leaving gifts. It’s a sign I'm familiar with. The crossroads are calling and asking to make some decisions. The beauty is I get to make them at all. So here we are and instead of running from them, I get to embrace all that I have learned over the last decade, and apply them to the now. I’ve always wanted a big life, not necessarily a lavish one, but one that allows me to feel expansive. I need sunlight, space, and to be free. To be able to create art, breathe, be chosen and loved for being me. That’s all. I don’t think it’s too much. But it’s wild how we will inexplicably stay away from those things we desire for fear of losing them. So today I do not run, to or from, but I allow the world to expand around me, with ease and grace, and the knowing that it all is possible, because when have I not figured it out before. It’s another gift from my Ancestors who also had to figure things out without anyone cheering them on, and even being downright told they couldn’t. Guess that's where I get it from.

So this day I choose gratitude. I am grateful for all those people that have walked with me on this ride, the first friends who drove me to ceremony, who picked me up and brought me to meetings, for my sponsors and sponsees, for my fellows, for the people who taught me not to take shit from people who say they are “friends”, the ones who walked away when I was too intense, emotional, or angry, for the clarity and spark that came back when I allowed myself to feel again, along with all of the lost memories that found their way home. If I do anything more on this path, it’s because I hope to make a difference and guide others who feel too much. To leave a legacy of helping people remember who they really are. To be a reminder that if you can free yourself from your own mind, then you can change a lot of things. It might not be perfect, or arrive exactly when or as you want, but it still matters, and makes a difference. If you read this far, thank you for being here. I appreciate you, your presence, your energy, and magic. May we all dream a new dream together.

Love, Marcella

I hope you are doing as well as you can during what somehow feels like the fourteenth month of the year. I say that with a little humor, but also with genuine curiosity about how we are all holding up. I admire everyone who continues to show up with care and intention despite the constant noise of the world.

August brings two eclipses, a Solar Eclipse on August 12 and a Partial Lunar Eclipse on August 28. Eclipses have long carried an air of mystery, and while I don’t see them as inherently negative, I do tend to treat them as a time to slow down, observe, and reflect. Rather than focusing on manifestation work, I like to spend this time reconnecting with my inner compass, taking stock in what to be grateful for, and grounding as much as possible. Truly take what resonates, leave the rest.

If you can, step away from the online chaos now and then. Say hello to someone in person. Spend time with your community. It is a simple reminder that we are not alone.

Lately I’ve realized how much joy I find in simply showing up. I still love creating and gathering together, but I also cherish being in the audience, supporting my friends, my partner, and my local community. There is something deeply meaningful about witnessing another person’s art, work, and magic.

I hope you feel supported in the days ahead. May you be safe, may you be well, and may you find moments of peace, even in uncertain times.

With love,
Marcella

photo by Ges Briggs aka Wild West Oracle

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If I’m here to do anything in front of people, I hope it’s this: to help someone feel understood and a little less alone in their own struggles.

At the same time, there is the strange pressure of being praised and vilified through conversations never actually had with me, but whispered in thought forms, facial expressions, screenshots, shares, saves, and gossip that somehow always finds its way back. Then there’s the anonymous harassment from people who don’t know you but somehow believe you owe them the service of being a punching bag.

The last few years have been one long grieving. Grieving friendships. My career. My old body. My missing uterus. Former homes and cities. The moments I wish I had responded differently by simply caring less. Even my feisty old self who wasn’t afraid of being visible.

Now I feel more like my six-year-old self: deeply sensitive, only with far too much awareness of this changing physical vessel. The older I get, now in menopause, mind you, the more reclusive I become.

I also hope to one day feel safe in expressing vulnerability instead of being condemned by it. And in turn, I hope you too, dear reader, can recognize your own softness with acceptance and let go of the inevitable shame spiral, that emotional hangover people call “oversharing.” I’m learning that kind of honesty is only truly safe when you find others who understand it too.

I confess I don’t want to feel—or know—this much all the time.

Approaching ten years of sobriety has its own strange retrospective quality. It’s like opening a time capsule: remembering the bottom alongside the excitement and renewal that came with believing hope was possible again.

I had an epiphany recently. I realized I truly treasured my sadness. It was the only place I could be completely alone. The only thing that had remained constant for so much of my life. Then I realized something else. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve lived in true despair.

What’s funny is that my sadness also seems to be the thing people get most uncomfortable with. It’s hard being a real-life Wednesday Addams. People adore the character, but they don’t quite know what to do when someone like that is standing in front of them. They worry that if they get too close, whatever lives inside you might somehow swallow them too.

All of this is to say that I’m not as sad for myself as I once was. Now I’m sad for the world. I want to be hopeful, but every day something crosses my feed, or my path in the physical world, that brushes the abyss inside my spirit.

So I want to practice gratitude by naming what is here.

I have a partner. A true partner. The first relationship of my life that finally showed me it wasn’t impossible to love me.

I have a roof over my head.

I can still find laughter and beauty in the world.

I have my sobriety, which during a time of such turbulence feels like winning a gold medal, especially as more and more of my peers seem to disappear from this Earth walk.

And if you’re still here reading, my hope is that these words offer a little salve and candlelight to help illuminate your own path through the dark.

After all, that’s why I named this thing Pep Talks from the Void.

It’s just a dear diary monologue, offered in the hope that somewhere inside it, you recognize a piece of yourself.

The way I lead people through is by taking you to where you need to be, next to the reality you desire or closest to it. So while you may sometimes see very real evidence of a shift, other times it’s a more subtle way of perceiving the world around you. It really is your personal responsibility as well. Just because you may want to shift doesn’t mean you will get all the way to where you think you need to be, but you will arrive where you need to be.

If you want to try this modality out without the meditation, some people unconsciously do it all the time, by changing their hair, wearing a different scent, taking a different route to work, using your non dominant hand, or just trying on an old identity character. It’s not always the trick, but sometimes even that works. I have even seen some people online breaking beloved items to make the shift. I personally don’t think you need to, but to each their own.

If you feel called or interested, I am hosting a by-donation Timeline Jump on Zoom this coming Monday. Yes, by donation. Sometimes my team in spirit nudges me to do these things, and I heed the call because this life is the jump for me. Here is the link, the times are in the image, and if you would like to make a donation to my Venmo or PayPal (as a gift, not a service), use @marcellakroll

Ironically, LA was never my hometown. I was born and raised in Rhode Island and lived in Brooklyn, New York, for a short time. But LA was the place that shaped me. It was where I built my path as a professional tarot reader and creator for nearly eighteen years. It fortified me.

What has surprised me most since leaving is how rejected I’ve felt.

I felt it when I moved to Long Beach, and I feel it even more now in Tucson. Tucson was never on my radar. In fact, I spent a long time trying to move back to Rhode Island. Every attempt was met with roadblocks until, somehow, the path opened here. In many ways, it reminded me of how LA opened for me back in 2006. It felt guided.

Because of that, I assumed this would be a place where I could put down roots personally and professionally.

The reality has been more complicated.

Tucson has opened my heart in many ways, but community and work have been another story. I’ve often felt treated like an outsider, Stranger Danger if you will, just another Californian arriving to take something rather than contribute. I’ve experienced a strange gatekeeping energy that ranges from subtle to impossible to ignore. The repeated follows and unfollows. The odd interactions online that somehow become even stranger in person. Or the seemingly good in-person experience met with weirdness after the fact.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m just overthinking it and being too sensitive. Other times, I wonder if this is simply where we are culturally. Maybe people are more guarded than they used to be. Maybe community has become something we talk about more than something we practice.

I’ve also been ruminating for the last few weeks on the difference between creating community and building an audience. They are not the same thing. Having people show up to an event you organized does not automatically create community. Community requires reciprocity, generosity, and a willingness to see one another beyond transactions. We don’t all have to be best friends, but we do have to care about something larger than ourselves.

Lately, I’ve realized that part of my longing for places I’ve lived before isn’t necessarily about geography. It’s about familiarity. It’s easier to reach toward spaces where the love is known, even when it’s distant. Like the Buzzocks lyric, And I’m surfing on a wave of nostalgia for an age yet to come”.

Being lonely in the place you live is exhausting.

I love my partner, and I love the life we’ve built here. But when I ask myself where I would go if I left, I never have an answer. No place feels entirely right.

Maybe that’s because I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist yet.

Maybe some of us aren’t meant to find our place. Maybe we’re meant to create it.

C’est la vie.

My mind is blown by the pay-to-play optics system in place. Literally horizontal today because creative expression is the only reason I am still here.

Who are we creating for when our work isn’t genuinely uplifted and supported? In an ideal world, we do it for ourselves. But what about those who create to share, to transmute, to offer something beyond themselves

Especially when some of us are not built to exist inside normie structures.

Where are the believers in magic, not just money? Where are the benefactors who believe in artistry? Let the healers be the fullest expression of themselves. Trust that their vision might be more expansive than what past sales can prove.

I can’t believe I’m at a point in my life where I have to beg people to believe in a vision that isn’t here yet. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing my whole life? Proving that you might not see it, but I can. So let’s make some real dreams come true.

Psychic maturity is being okay with uncertainty, but you still need to feel held. You still need security.

Let the visionary be a goddamn visionary. Or is the whole plot to kill them off?

Make it make sense.

In the meantime, I implore you not to give up hope or abandon your vision simply because someone else cannot see it. Their inability to recognize it is not a measure of your value, your contribution, or your worth. Not being favored by metrics or the shifting winds of public praise does not diminish what you bring to the world.

Sometimes you are far ahead in the ethers, creating new landscapes the future will one day need. And more often than not, society fears what it cannot define. What feels unseen today may simply be ahead of its time.

You are probably doing better than you think. You may not be able to see that right now, but somewhere down the road, with the gift of hindsight, I believe you will.

My mind is blown by the pay-to-play optics system in place. Literally horizontal today because creative expression is the only reason I am still here.

Who are we creating for when our work isn’t genuinely uplifted and supported? In an ideal world, we do it for ourselves. But what about those who create to share, to transmute, to offer something beyond themselves

Especially when some of us are not built to exist inside normie structures.

Where are the believers in magic, not just money? Where are the benefactors who believe in artistry? Let the healers be the fullest expression of themselves. Trust that their vision might be more expansive than what past sales can prove.

I can’t believe I’m at a point in my life where I have to beg people to believe in a vision that isn’t here yet. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing my whole life? Proving that you might not see it, but I can. So let’s make some real dreams come true.

Psychic maturity is being okay with uncertainty, but you still need to feel held. You still need security.

Let the visionary be a goddamn visionary. Or is the whole plot to kill them off?

Make it make sense.

In the meantime, I implore you not to give up hope or abandon your vision simply because someone else cannot see it. Their inability to recognize it is not a measure of your value, your contribution, or your worth. Not being favored by metrics or the shifting winds of public praise does not diminish what you bring to the world.

Sometimes you are far ahead in the ethers, creating new landscapes the future will one day need. And more often than not, society fears what it cannot define. What feels unseen today may simply be ahead of its time.

You are probably doing better than you think. You may not be able to see that right now, but somewhere down the road, with the gift of hindsight, I believe you will.